The history of Degas' time in New Orleans Continued/ A Historic Time

The Suffering of the City of New Orleans by Degas

The title and the picture are captivating.  As you look at the subject matter one cannot help but think what could this be about with royalty shooting naked helpless people against a pastoral landscape with stormy skies.  There must be a meaning beyond the subject matter, an allegory, an implication, a hidden message and there was.  New Orleans was going through a stormy period of its history and Degas' family was right smack dab in the middle of the drama, so Degas had a front row seat.  Here is another excerpt from Benfey's book Degas in New Orleans that gives insight in to the meaning of this historical epic painting.  It was the last of this genre Degas was to do, and was shown later in Paris, but received little attention.

"As chance would have it, Degas's five-month sojourn in New Orleans coincided with an extraordinarily contentious period in the stormy political history of the city. One could argue that it was the decisive moment in Reconstruction New Orleans, as the city, under Federal control and under the constant threat of military occupation, tried to recover from the ravages of the Civil War. Degas's American relatives were among the leaders in this political upheaval.

It was also a key moment in the cultural history of this most exotic of American cities. During precisely this uneasy period, several major American writers were beginning to mine the resources of New Orleans culture and history, often choosing the same subjects, experiencing the same events, and moving in the same social circles, as did Edgar Degas. What was it about this war-torn, diverse, and conflicted city that elicited from Degas some of his finest works? What can his paintings and letters tell us about New Orleans during a pivotal period in Reconstruction Louisiana? And what do we need to know about the intricate weave of New Orleans society--French and "American," black and white, native and newly arrived--to make sense of Degas's sojourn there?

In an attempt to answer these questions, this book follows the interwoven lives of several men and women of New Orleans during the years surrounding the Civil War. The central figures are three: Edgar Degas and the writers George Washington Cable and Kate Chopin. All three spent varying lengths of time in New Orleans during the 1870s. Ties of friendship and family linked these people, in turn, to others, connecting the stubbornly French (and still French-speaking) Creole colony in nineteenth-century New Orleans to its little-known mirror image: the "Louisiana colony" in France--"notre petite colonie Louisianaise," as Degas's Parisian uncle Eugene Musson affectionately called it. This book places Degas within this transatlantic network of prominent individuals and families--both white and black--who maintained close connections with New Orleans, and moved freely between France and America, as though the two "colonies" constituted a single cultural realm.

Degas was the only major French painter of the Impressionist generation to travel to the United States and paint what he saw there. Other French painters had ties to the New World, to be sure. As a young man, Edouard Manet had visited Brazil while working as a sailor, and painted some of the exotic sights, especially the women. Odilon Redon claimed to have been conceived in Louisiana, before travelling back to France in his mother's womb--he ascribed his taste for bright colors to the American South. Camille Pissarro's childhood in the Jewish community of the Virgin Islands gave him subjects for a few early sketches, though once settled in France he never looked back. To the extent that she turned herself into a French painter (under her close friend Degas's tutelage), Mary Cassatt is perhaps an exception. Nonetheless, it is surprising that Degas--one of the greatest painters to try his hand at American subjects--has received so little attention as an astute interpreter of the American scene.